---
title: Substance Requirements
description: What qualifies as substance vs sugar-rush content, with a worked insufficient/sufficient example and the 2-of-5 substance checklist.
source: skills/tier-3-content-ops/substance-requirements.md
updated: 2026-07-02
order: 4
---

# Substance Requirements

## What Qualifies as Substance

**Insufficient (sugar rush):**
"Most GTM teams don't use their data well."

**Sufficient (substance):**
"Worked with a client last month who had 30k enriched contacts in HubSpot. Sales complained they had no one to call. Looked at the CRM - zero ICP scoring, no engagement tracking, everything tagged 'prospect.' Built a simple 1-10 fit score based on industry, employee count, tech stack, and geo. Created three views: 8-10 with recent activity, 6-7 with open opps, 4-5 for nurture. Sales went from 'no targets' to 'here's our Q1 list' in a week. The data was fine. The views were missing."

## Substance Checklist

Every substantive claim needs at least 2 of:
- [ ] Specific example with concrete details (numbers, tools, timeframes)
- [ ] Technical implementation (column names, formulas, prompts)
- [ ] Reasoning shown (not just conclusions)
- [ ] Consequences or results (what happened?)
- [ ] Gotchas or lessons learned